Recipe Index

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Veal Stew

This was one of the jokes my brother and his friends would pull on me. I might not have said anything like this, but they would improvise a story around the above joke and tell anybody listening for a laugh. I wonder if he or any of his friends knew Easter was a ‘moveable feast' and that is why it always falls on Sunday

Happy Easter to you! I am sure you always knew it falls on Sunday.

Resurrection of Jesus on the 3rd day from his crucifixion. This is the most significant festival for Christians, in fact, bigger than Christmas. Thankfully, it is not as commercialized as Christmas and the gravity and seriousness is honored.

You must be familiar with Easter eggs as a common feature in the celebrations here in the U.S. But growing up, I do not remember it to be important. Over the summer holidays, which fall now in India, we would color egg shells and place it on plants but that was not to celebrate Easter. We don't even consider cooking eggs on this day in a special way.

Then what do we do? The most important thing to do was to eat a lot of meat and fish. It starts off with breakfast with appam and stew. Today, I will share veal stew with you which goes well with appam or white bread. Hope you enjoy it.

Stewing as a cooking term means to cook meat and vegetables by simmering and thickening by reducing the juices or thickening the gravy with flour or any other thickening agent. In Kerala, most cooking is slow and on stove stop, and what we call stew is slow cooked, no doubt, but generally to mean a mildly spiced meat or vegetable in coconut milk.

Stew

Ingredients:

Veal – 1.5 Lb

Garam Masala – ½ tspn

Vinegar – ½ tsp optional

Potato – 1 cubed

Pepper corns – 10

Cloves – 10

Cinnamon stick – ½ inch piece

Elachi – 3

Onions – ½

Ginger – 1 Tbspn

Garlic – 3 pods

Green Chili – 6 or as per taste

Coriander Powder – 1 tspn

Coconut Milk – 1 Can

Tomato – 4 or 5 round pieces for garnish

Oil – 2 Tbspn

Salt - to taste

Method:

1.1. Make bite size pieces of veal. Take it with 1/4 tspn salt, vinegar, garam masala and ½ cup water in a pressure cooker and cook for one whistle.

6.6. Pour the remaining coconut milk and heat through. Top the gravy with 4 or 5 slices of tomatoes and switch off the fire

Notes:

1.1. I thin the coconut milk further ever before I add at the final stage because I like the gravy thin. However, traditionally the cream of coconut milk is added at the end to keep the flavor rich and gravy thick.

2.2. Play with the consistency to your liking. If you feel you should not add too much water fearing the curry will spoil. It will be a good practice to boil about 2 cups of water and how much you need to thin the coconut milk to your liking.

Happy easter to you tooo. The veal looks yumm and what a way to start off Easter :)And totally loved the purple color. The scriptures say, Jesus was made to wear a purple robe before he was crucified. And as for me, I'm a total purple addict. Hence, the blog name too :)

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Co-authored by two friends, we share our culinary experience on collaborative curry. This blog features mostly recipes from Kerala,South India and simple home-baking recipes. Thank you for stopping by and hope you enjoy the visit. We appreciate your opinions and thoughts about this site. If you have any questions or suggestions, send us a mail